The Pittsburgh Steelers have already signed four compensatory unrestricted free agents to contracts that have a chance of qualifying for the compensatory formula, so the fact that their fifth signing, former Jacksonville Jaguars inside linebacker Myles Jack, was released isn’t entirely significant.
Suffice it to say that the chances aren’t too great that the Steelers will be receiving any compensatory picks for their free agency losses this offseason, if only due to the number of players they’ve already signed, including more significant deals for James Daniels, Mason Cole, and Mitch Trubisky. But either way, getting released is what brought Jack to Pittsburgh, and that’s how he sees it.
“You’re never safe. You’re never solidified in what your position can be”, he told reporters yesterday during his media availability session. “You could be somewhere, anywhere. I learned that in a pretty harsh way. And it’s pretty cool. I accept it, and I’m excited, because if it got me here, I think it was all worth it. It was a bigger plan in the making”.
A former 2016 second-round draft pick out of UCLA, Jack had spent the entirely of his career with the Jaguars up to his release earlier this week. Across six seasons, he started 82 of 88 games, registering 513 tackles with 19 for loss, along with three interceptions, 15 passes defensed, two forced fumbles, four recoveries, 6.5 sacks, and two total defensive scores.
While he has never made the Pro Bowl, he has been a consistently reliable starter for the bulk of his career. He earned himself a four-year, $57 million contract extension from the Jaguars in 2019, whom they later paired with Joe Schobert—whom the Steelers just released, having acquired him from the Jaguars via trade in August, in order to balance out the cap impact of Jack’s signing.
Unlike Schobert, most likely, however, Jack wasn’t really expecting it. While he acknowledged that he “could kind of feel it in the air that it may be a change coming”, he also said that he was ultimately caught by surprise that he was released. Even after signing Foyesade Oluokun to a three-year, $45 million contract.
“When I saw the frenzy that we saw at the linebacker, I was naively like, ‘Oh, yeah, cool! I’m gonna have another linebacker to play with’”, he said, after seeing Jacksonville sign the former Falcons linebacker, with his 192 tackles last season. “So, I mean, I definitely fell for that, was not expecting it, but that’s the life of this business”.
But, as he said, the process of what has transpired this past week is what has ultimately brought him to Pittsburgh, where he’s excited to get on board with head coach Mike Tomlin and his mission of seeking a Lombardi Trophy—something that eluded him in Jacksonville, even though the Jaguars actually have a more recent postseason victory, in Pittsburgh no less, than do the Steelers.
